by Scott M Gleeson, USA TODAY Sports

by Scott M Gleeson, USA TODAY Sports

When speaking to the media on Friday at a news conference for Louisville's game against Memphis, Rick Pitino expressed his anger over the present state of the NCAA with an abundance of conference realignment, most notably Thursday's news that seven Catholic schools would part ways with the Big East.

Louisville, of course, will be joining the ACC, a move made in November. But that didn't stop Pitino from sounding off.

"It's not something I enjoy looking at," Pitino said in the news conference. "Although we're very pleased to be part of the Atlantic Coast Conference, I think what's happened has been extremely disturbing...all because people are running around with helmets."

Pitino suggested he saw the dominoes beginning to fall, recalling a conversation with Georgetown coach John Thompson III and Villanova coach Jay Wright on the topic.

"Two months ago I was (having) a conversation with John Thompson and Jay Wright," Pitino explained. "I told them, you guys are going to break away and get fed up with all this. They looked at me and I said, 'it should have happened a long time ago.'

"The Big East to me was very, very special. I know it is for Jim and for John Thompson III, Jay Wright, we all grew up on Big East, all love the Big East."

Pitino wasn't the only current Big East coach to chime in on the matter. Thompson III, who grew up watching his father coach the Hoyas during the early days of the Big East in the 1980s, told The Washington Post: "It's not going to be an emotional decision" to leave the Big East and that "it's a decision based on research and projections of what's best for this institution as much as we can control."

Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, who's the only coach in the league who's been around since its inception in 1979, was deeply saddened when interviewed by USA TODAY Sports.

"It has been a privilege to be in this conference," he said. "Anyone who thinks I am not disappointed, that I am not sad that the Big East did not survive, they don't know me. I don't have any patience for those people."

Pitino was particularly disheartened with the Big East's fracturing because he feels all of the conference realignment is based on money-driven moves that won't be beneficial for the lower-revenue programs.

"For those of us in basketball, we're all fed up," Pitino said. "We're all tired of tradition being killed around the country...at the expense of women's sports, who are now going to have to make three different connections sometimes."

"I think the closest school to West Virginia in the Big 12 is 800 miles," Pitino added. "It's OK for and football and basketball because they charter flights but women's sports, men's soccer, lacrosse and all these other sports, ya know, not only is tradition gone for these leagues, but (consider) the complications of travel. And it's all based on one thing: money. If this were a government issued thing, they'd break up these monopolies."